pathetic 'bit.''
'After what had happened in Oxford?'
'Precisely. That was the order of events.'
'All right, you two,' said Ed. 'We're all finished here. Very good Jake, you seem to have it straightened out now. And thank you for straightening us out, me and Frank. We have everything we need. Case dosed. Come on everybody, let's go do some work.'
'Just a minute if you don't mind.' Jake's voice was back to its normal level. 'What exactly do you mean by case closed?'
'That there's nothing more to be said. With your help we have assembled one classic sortie of one type of hopeless neurotic.'
'I can think of one or two more things to be said. Doesn't either of you feel any sense of responsibility for what's happened?'
'We feel concerned, of course, since she's our patient, in very different senses in our two cases.'
'Do you now? But I was talking about responsibility. Anyway, how long has she been your patient in very different senses?'
'Just over a year,' said Rosenberg. He seemed curious to know where this discussion might lead.
'Since March.' Ed seemed to know roughly where and not to mind.
'And has she made one of these suicide attempts or phoney suicide attempts before?'
'Not that I know of,' said Rosenberg.
'Well you know of one now. Doesn't it strike you at all that that means she's got worse while you've been 'treating' her? While she's been undergoing your 'therapy'?'
Ed squeezed his chin and said rather wearily, 'It might have happened at any time. Any time at all.'
'And you've always been and always will be quite powerless to prevent it or render it to the slightest extent less likely. Which matters a bit, some people might think, because even a phoney suicide attempt is quite a serious matter, not just a fairly interesting example of something, which is all you seem to see in it. As your mate was saying, they do sometimes succeed. Kelly isn't alive yet.'
'No let him finish, Frank. After all, he's our patient too, remember.'
'Only for the next couple of minutes, and that only in case I may say something I'd prefer to be privileged, if that still counts at all. Let's try a spot of adding up. You've done less than nothing for Kelly. How about Ivor? Ivor, have you improved since you started going to Ed?'
'I think I'm about the same, thank you Jake.'
'Nothing for Ivor. What about Chris? Perhaps you cured him and sent him on his way rejoicing. Did you?'
'Jake, I don't deal in cures.' Ed sounded angry but in full command of himself. 'Did I offer you a cure? I aim to release checks on emotion and to improve insight, that's all.'
'Funny how it's got about that both of those must be good. Stop bottling up that emotion that makes you want to hit your wife with a sledgehammer. Gain insight, you're bound to like what you see. To prefer it to what you couldn't see before. Let me tell you, 'Ed', there's no such thing as a totally phoney suicide attempt. They all want to be at least a little bit dead for a little while. If you were Kelly and found out more about yourself, how would you feel? More likely to knock yourself off or less? And talking of Kelly, there's a small piece of her that can see properly, of course there is or what is it that's gaining insight, but you'll never reach it, not with your methods. Methods, Christ. You just make it up as you go along, which I suppose you call being empirical if you know the word, and there'll always be plenty of applicants, lonely pansies like Lionel who want a nice chat and poor old dears like Ruth who want a good cry and fatheads like Geoffrey who want to show off. What you're up to is hideously boring to anyone without wants or needs of that sort. But then on the other hand it's intellectually beneath contempt—I should have made it dear that the whole of this bit applies equally to your undistinguished colleague. As against all that what you do is dangerous in the extreme. And yet when you come to weigh it up it's funny too, in other words it would be impossible for anyone with a grain of humour in them. All you have, but in abundance, is arrogance and effrontery. Oh, and a certain amount of greed.'
'Have you finished?' asked Ed.
'I think so. Should there be more?'
'You're the best judge of that, Jake. I've let you run on because anybody can see you have this most painful conflict between concern for a martyr-figure and anger at having been made the victim of a—'
'I'm not letting you run on, old boy, I can't have you explaining me, that would be, as you would certainly say, too much. I cease to be your patient as of this moment. And also, in a very different sense of course, junior's patient too.'
'Mr Richardson,' said Rosenberg, 'may I talk to you in private for just a few minutes?'
'Certainly. Hang on.' Jake moved across to Brenda and tried to signal or will her to leave the room with him, using every means short of verbal directive, but she sat on in her chair next to the doorway and looked at him without curiosity. It occurred to him that in the last couple of minutes he had rather pissed on the proceedings, thereby breaking a promise, and pissed on Geoffrey, shown himself to be at least momentarily against him, too. 'Sorry,' he said to her, feeling hard up for words. 'Things sort of got on top of me. I'd better be off, get a train. Sorry.'
'I understand,' she said as before.
'Well .... cheerio, love. See you when? Tomorrow night? Okay, fine.'
As he made to kiss her cheek she seemed to relent and kissed him on the mouth with some warmth. He waved in a general fashion at the rest of the room, looking at nobody, and went. After a word to Ed to start without him, Rosenberg followed.
